There's smoke on the horizon
beneath an open sea
closing on grainy visions.
In an obscured sky
twin moons merge briefly,
illuminating barren features beneath silver linings
losing brilliance. Imagine
darkness
skirting collisions, spinning
into its quickened cycle, spiraling
radiating some misunderstood energies
thought of as kindness, or kinship.

Veils obscure absent eyes milky white
delicately placed off center to attract attention
      awa  y
to the edges of presen(ts)ce.
Fractures eke out mollified dreams
better left for a different when,
still spied through corner glances
and brief glimpses of a time forgotten.
Stare out through rolling hills,
drifting between currents and canyons
hiding prospects and perspectives
shrinking, shifting topics to
silence,
hours
spent on roads throughout country
we'll never truly see. Hundreds
of miles, with nothing in between.

Let's lay
beneath blankets of estranged forethought
fathers speaking in lost refrains
brothers and sisters spinning in circles
for atten(ua)tion?
attunement?
spinning, bare feet striking
new grounds
leaving paths for those to follow,
what we would have called ours
if not for lost vocabulary.

Between pillars of salt and smoke
we continue along a path founded by ancestors,
tasting our sacred fruits
soured by the lives which watered them,
stains now set to patters,
repeated until they become tradition,
crossing into teachings to which
we kneel
masked by some layer of proper posturing
predictively programmed to provoke
passe (prisms) precautions,
an effect of visual innocence
tarnished, no longer
do we know who hides behind the pierced cowl,
stilled face, lifeless and radiant,
forgotten in sight.

mute, we tell tall tales
of monster's sacrifices,
humanity a frail barrier.
Vapid thoughts dissipate
as leather lungs propagate vacuous words,
bruised rose petals whisper an attempt
at appeasement
lost in the shivers of the wind, briefly
caught only by chance and it's simple
to pretend they never came.

There's smoke on the horizon,
signals rise to prominence
once communication's faltered.
Hollow, revert to body language,
broken and distorted, the veil falls
as we look upon ourselfs from breaths away.
In our eyes a slotted face falls close,
unrecognizable, yet our own
clearly cloaked in cold sun and decorative scars,
an odious inverse to delicacy.
Animals trapped in the same cage
finding comfort in the fury of escape attempts,
pitted against on another
we find solace in our embrace,
teeth bared from true recognition
it was never passion,
only instinct.